


The Sharpest Knives

by Nyx_Fedra



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, F/M, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Recovery, Suicidal Thoughts, They're both in a bad place but somehow meet halfway, Trauma, childhood crush to enemies to friends to lovers, discussion of past relationships, discussion of past trauma, everyone is trying to figure things out as best as they can
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:28:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27981546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyx_Fedra/pseuds/Nyx_Fedra
Summary: Things had resurfaced after the war that she didn’t understand, that she didn’t want to understand, because doing so would have shaken her already crumbling world to the ground, and leaving would have been equal to declare bankruptcy on her brain, and she wasn’t ready to do that just yet.Or, after the war Hermione isn’t the person she used to be, but everyone still expects her to act as if nothing has changed, to follow through with expectations and plans that had been laid out for her by others without asking. Enter Draco Malfoy, her nemesis, her opposite. Yet, the only person who seems to understand what it’s going on with her.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 10
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> CW - In the second half of the chapter (after the divider) there is the description of a suicide attempt. It's not a graphic description of self harm but please turn back if that might disturb you. Mind the tags.  
> English is not my first language so excuse all grammatical errors if you can.

Even in a world that was full of wonders, he caught her eye.

It wasn’t just the colour of his hair, which stood out brightly in the crowd, but the way he carried himself. There was control to his movements, calculations behind every word that came out of his mouth, something she had never seen in any of her peers before. It was intriguing, fascinating. He seemed to be her opposite: she couldn’t stop talking even when she tried, overflowing with new knowledge and eager to absorb more about a world she knew nothing about until a couple of months before, whilst he was silent and calculated with his every words, both feet already firmly planted on the ground while she was still scrambling to make a place for herself.

Years afterwards, when she would occasionally think back to those first months she spent at Hogwarts, Hermione would try her hardest avoid it: how embarrassingly easy it had been for her eleven years old self to develop a crush on Draco Malfoy. At first, she had even excused his behaviour towards Harry, and especially toward Ron, because the wound created by Ron’s constant shaming of her thirst for knowledge ran deep. At that time, the way Ron treated her like a nuisance hurt more than the first whispers of the word ‘mudblood’ that came her way from some Slytherins, mostly because Ron’s treatment of her seemed to influence everyone in their year at Gryffindor to do the same, perhaps because of his friendship with Harry. It seems ridiculous to say that Ron made her feel like an outcast those first months at Hogwarts, how it was his fault she felt lonely and scared and out of place, his fault she cursed the Sorting Hat wishing it had sorted her into Ravenclaw every night. She was ashamed to even admit that there was a lot resentment on her part towards Ron even after their friendship began after the Troll accident, because he first ridiculed her knowledge and then took advantage of it shamelessly.

From September first to the thirty first of October of that first year, she indulged in it, in her childhood crush for Draco Malfoy. She delighted in the way he smiled with his eyes when she raised her hand. It felt like the joke wasn’t _her_ but everyone else, like he was delighted and fascinated to see her sprint while everyone else didn’t even have their shoes on. It made her wonder what the catch was: he almost never spoke in class and he was always around with Crabbe and Goyle - clearly not the two sharpest knives in the drawer - and she had always been the butt of jokes even in Muggle school, ever the overeager and annoying overachiever. But then the first marks came out mid-October, and she realised that if he wasn’t right behind her, he was a few steps ahead. And the small spark that lighted his eyes every time she answered correctly seemed to erase Ron’s childish cruelty, giving her the confidence to smile instead of just bowing her head hoping not to hear Ron’s hurtful mutterings behind her. For once, she felt like was in on the joke, and Draco Malfoy seemed to like to see how far she could go, how much the others would fall behind both of them, while he kept his plans close to his chest.

It was only after she became friends with Harry that he started to behave differently, it was then that her being a mudblood seemed to become an issue, and years passed and she buried all those initial feelings and thoughts about him under the label _enemy_ , never speaking about it to anyone out of shame.

But she could still feel his eyes on her every time she raised her hand, she could still find him in a crowd even if she didn’t want to. And when at Malfoy Manor he looked at her right in the eyes and said: _’I’m not sure’_ even though he _knew_ , something unknown cracked open within her. A mix of feelings that simmered when he looked away when Bellatrix turned on her, when her mind fixated on how badly he was hiding the tremors of his hands so not to succumb to the pain. It grew into something she could not recognise in the Room of Requirements until she could almost make sense of it once the battle was over. But surrounded by death and pain, Hermione buried her thoughts deep so not to crumble, advancing on a simple checklist of what was expected of her to survive.

It worked until everything spilled over. But unlike like when she first arrived at Hogwarts, this time she was overflowing with her own notions, her own thoughts, spilling into directions she didn’t even know her mind could go to.

It worked until in the middle of the commemoration for the fallen exactly a year after the final battle she met Draco Malfoy’s eyes, spotting him in the back even in a crowd. And he was an enemy and yet he wasn’t.

And when she stood up, something sparked in his eyes, similar to the silent joke they briefly shared those first two months, that gave her confidence in her thoughts, that made her sure she wasn’t about to say something stupid, because when he looked at her like that in class, her answer had always been the right one.

‘This is bullshit and you are all a bunch of fucking idiots’ she said interrupting McGonagall’s speech, the crowd gasping around her, her friends looking at her as if she’d gone crazy.

But she wasn’t crazy. Hermione felt for the first time as if she’d finally read _enough_ , as if she was finally ready to speak her mind instead of just quoting from a book, or to seek justification for her thoughts in a book.

She walked away restless and angry, yet relieved and proud, magic moving around her in unruly patterns, itching on her skin, cracking the stones that had just been repaired, Draco Malfoy’s eyes on her, looking at her as if she’d reached the finish line and put a gold medal around her neck while others stumbled around not even knowing what she’d done.

* * *

She felt empty and lost after the battle. She looked around her and saw death and grief and pain and it suddenly hit her, the weight of all that had happened to her and her friends since they entered Hogwarts, all that she had pushed down because she had to be prepared, because she had to be the one who knew things and who remained calm enough to think of sensible plans.

Her first instinct was to scream, but she couldn’t do that, so she walked away unnoticed trying not to trip on the rubble, not to look at the corpses on the ground. Hermione kept going until she found a place hidden enough so that no one would come or think to look at her here. Although she didn’t thought anyone would come looking for her. It was a weird feeling, much like the one she had back when she first came to Hogwarts, despite everything she had given and done, she was still an outsider, even if she had friends. She wasn’t making a fault of their grief, but the contrast was stark: she had given up her family, obliviated them out of her life for their safety, yes, but also so that they couldn’t become a liability to her, so that she could do what was asked of her without being anxious about their life. It was the sort of calculation that she had learned to make over the years, while the danger around her intensified and the demand for her to _do_ , to _be_ , increased as well. No one had done the same, and she felt the ambers of resentment flutter inside her. Fourth year had been a general trial for what she felt know, for the resentment that was born from only having been asked to give and give and then everyone calling _difficult_ and _unreasonable_ when she wanted to take something. It probably wasn’t the appropriate moment for these kind of thoughts, but she couldn’t help herself. She knew the Weasleys were mourning Fred’s death, she knew Harry was coming to terms with being free of Voldemort’s influence. But what about her?

They always assumed she was okay, they always assumed she was ready and eager to give an answer to whatever question, solve any problem, without any consideration of the work that went on behind the scenes. Not only the hours poured over books, but also the way she shaped herself to remain calm and rational no matter what, the way she _learned_ herself, her own tells, so to make calculations and moves that would allow her to _remain_ focused and calm. Calculations like giving up her parents, like suppressing wants and feelings that would make Harry and Ron uneasy or uncomfortable.

And it was the right thing to do, fight alongside Harry, but suddenly she felt as if among the three of them, it was her who ended up doing the bulk of the work. Harry and Ron didn’t do it on purpose, she was sure of it, but they had internalised as right the way they had behaved towards her since first year, perhaps because she never pushed too much against what hurt her, afraid she’ll end up alone again. It wasn’t just their constant childish refusal to do homework, it was the way they relied on her to fix whatever happened, to find a solution, to complete any assignment, and they did it so much and so easily that they seemed to have stopped trying to do things themselves first.

Whilst her relationship with Ron had become strained through the years, she felt too far away from Ginny and her circle of friends, and even somehow farther away from Harry, who had started to keep more and more to himself. She stopped on her track when she thought of Ron, grimacing while thinking about the kiss they’d shared. So much was going on, there was so much she needed to do and think about that she’d just let it happened, even though a part of her knew she would regret it forever. Although she had entertained the idea of a romantic relationship with Ron for years, _hoped_ for it, all dissipated when he left her and Harry alone. There was a selfishness to Ron, an inferiority complex which she could somehow tolerate as a friend, but she couldn’t take anything more. She was sure that if she tried to he would just suck parts of her out of herself, parts that she wanted to keep after everything she’d given.

Unfortunately, the spot she had chosen to hide, cry, and maybe scream, wasn’t deserted: Draco Malfoy stood near the bulwark, staring blankly out at the horizon, hands shaking lightly just like when she was at the Manor under Bellatrix’s wand. She doubted he had ever stopped shaking, she doubted he would stop soon. She could hear Narcissa and Lucius arguing not too far away and Hermione looked at him: he had made, once again, a choice opposite to her own. He had given up his life for a chance to save his family from the war, whilst she had given up her family for a chance to win the war. They’d both gambled dangerously, and they were both dealing with the consequences of it.

She was lost in thought, trying to make a sense of her feelings for him: pity, some empathy, but also the urge to take her wand out and make him pay for how he had treated her since they were eleven. But it would have been unfair, he was an easy target but he wasn’t even number one on the list of people she wanted to slap in the face, not anymore. Among destruction and loss, he was still a part of the kind-of calm and happy life she’d had before, and she was happy that a part of that past was still alive, keeping memories intact instead of turning them sour with grief and regret.

Then he took a step over the bulwark, and she snapped back into reality.

‘Are you going to jump?’ she asked, speaking before thinking, a first for her.

Malfoy froze, one feet on the stone of the bulwark, the canyon that surrounded Hogwarts underneath that. He turned and looked at her with empty eyes that somehow told her everything. The boy who had fascinated her with his control of himself, and who had been forced to give up so much of it until almost nothing remained, until all the plans he had kept close to his chest had unravelled leaving his hands empty.

‘And what about it?’ he asked, a pinch of anger, clearly trying to keep some of his dignity intact.

He looked at her almost defiantly while he helped himself up the bulwark by grabbing a half destroyed gargoyle, daring her to say more, or to take her revenge.

‘I have a question before you do’ she said moving towards him.

The exhaustion that had taken her after the battle seemed to be gone, and it was nothing to raise herself up onto the bulwark next to him, staring right into the abyss. Malfoy’s hands were still shaking, she could see it in the corner of her eye, a little worse than before. Hermione didn’t really know what she was doing, she’d never really done anything without having a clear plan beforehand.

‘What was the joke?’ she asked staring at the horizon, the sun had almost reached midday, and she tried not to think of the corpses littered around the school, her parents having a life under the Australian’s sun without even remembering they had a daughter.

‘What?’ Malfoy asked, clearly confused, but also clearly worried. Did he really think she would push him? Did he wanted her to?

‘Those first months here, before I became friends with Harry and Ron, before you knew I was a mudblood, you were the only one who wasn’t annoyed when I raised my hand constantly in class. It felt like we had a joke. So I just wanted to check. What was the joke?’

Malfoy let out a bitter laugh and turned his head towards her, his eyes looked a bit more alive as they wondered over her face looking for something she couldn’t name. He took his time before he answered, he was clearly letting go of something he had buried a long time ago, as much as she had buried her first thoughts of him under piles of shame after they became enemies. Another thing they had in common. In different ways, they had let people’s expectations shape them and their behaviours: Malfoy tried to be what his father wanted him to be, what he thought would help his family, whilst Hermione tried to become what Harry and Ron needed, giving up her family in the process.

He smiled.

Malfoy smiled like he used to smile back then, before it became a smirk that followed poisoned words.

‘I was disappointed by Hogwarts at first. No one seemed to see the wonder of it after the first few days, everyone was always complaining about classes, which I suppose it’s what normal children do. But I was raised with the idea that I had to be the best, and while it was a burden it also became something I enjoyed: the more I knew, the more control I realised I had on my magic. And I loved that, but I was also angry. Potter wasn’t better. He is an average wizard, he was an average student overcompensating for his stupidity with tons of Gryffindor bravery, and he got all the glory. I wasn’t jealous of the downsides of his fame, but it was infuriating to clearly be doing much better academically and being ignored, no, scratch that, cheated out of even those stupid house points because Dumbledore thought Saint Potter could be allowed to fail upwards unlike the rest of us.

So it was refreshing, seeing you so eager. It was nice to know I wasn’t in a league of my own even if my father wished for nothing but. It was nice even coming in behind you on the marks, because it just spurred me to do better, whilst coming second because of Potter’s stupidity infuriated me and left me incapable to concentrate on anything for the rest of the day. The joke was everyone else, they hadn’t figured it out yet, some still have not figured it out now, that those lessons and books they called boring weren’t just stuff to remember to pass a test: it was the upwards climb to better know and control the magic the flows through us, without letting it consume us, or without letting it go dormant by considering it as a simple thing that needs no afterthought. So yeah, those first few months were nice, the joke we had was nice, Granger.’

Hermione felt his words flow through her, and it was like reviving her memories from a different point of view. She was fascinated by his thoughts on magic, they seemed to explain in a different way the anxieties she’d always had about her own magic, the reason she was always frantically looking for more, afraid of what would happen, what would she do, if she didn’t know. She had loved that kind of research about magic, she loved looking though books for answers to questions she didn’t even knew she had instead of just furiously rushing from book to book looking for a way for Harry, and occasionally Ron, not to die.

‘You knew he was wrong’ she said out loud, suddenly realising that she had boxed Draco Malfoy into neat labels so much she had ended up not trusting her instincts, her own first impression. Because he _was_ , had _always been_ , calculated, controlled, even though through the years his temper had gotten worse as he lost that control.

‘You knew Voldemort was wrong’.

A tremor seemed to go through his entire body when she said the name out loud.

‘Horcruxes are such a stupid idea’ he said holding his hands together, trying to force his body to stop shaking ‘honestly if he wanted immortality he should have stuck to the whole Philosopher’s Stone thing. Someone did it before, so it follows that it could be done again. Just because something hasn’t been done before it doesn’t mean it’s some amazing solution, more likely than not it’s not done because it’s stupid and leads to disaster’  
‘But you followed him anyway, you _believed_ and _did_ anyway’ she pointed out looking out once more towards the horizon, anger simmering inside her.

‘Nothing’s more dangerous than an idiot with resources and people who agree he is right. He had the resources, he had the people, and he had my family. I’m not trying to… to justify my actions. For a moment I believed, or I thought I did, or I wanted to… but it doesn’t matter, does it? I did what I did because I thought it was the only way to keep my parents safe, siding with them instead of fighting against them. I’m sure everyone will make it sound so damn easy in the coming days: why didn’t you just left your family to die and did the right thing, which could have ended up killing them?’ hate and anger dripping his every words.

‘But It’s never that easy, isn’t it? And let’s be honest, if I’d done that I would have never been able to live with myself. Everyone would have hated me the same, because I would have left my parents to die. I’m not proud of my choices, I tried to chose the best with what I knew and feared, and we’re alive, aren’t we? I will admit that things spiralled out of my control since fourth year… I mean, whatever control a stubborn fourteen year old thinks he has on his parents. If it had been up to me we would have left after the whole Chamber of Secrets affair. France, or even farther away if it’d had my way completely, but my father was stubborn, and before I could realise what had happened he was in Azkaban and the Dark Lord was in my house. I don’t know how your muggle parents are, Granger, but in my experience nothing’s harder than trying to change the mind of a middle aged man who thinks he has all the answers.’

Hermione snorted at that, remembering how stubborn her own father was. He always believed that because he did things a certain way, other did it like that as well. It was frustrating most of the time, spending her summers trying to explain to him that wizarding society didn’t work like muggle society. Her mother, on the other hand, was horrified by wizarding society most of the time, and not because of dark wizards, but because of the lack of care for what seemed common things to muggles, like the lack of welfare programs or the incapacity of muggle parents to communicate with anyone beside their own children unless they were contacted first. The lack of telephones, the use of quills and inks, the old fashioned dresses, had all given her mother a sense of a society that yes, was magical, but that had also closed it self off so much it had remained stuck in the past. That had also been the reason why her parents never enjoyed spending time with Molly and Arthur too much. It wasn’t specifically Arthur and Molly, it was more what Arthur and Molly told them about wizards that made especially her mother angry and disappointed. In fact, for her mother, who had participated in numerous marches organised in London by the Women Liberation Movement in the 1970s and 1980s, had been a great disappointed to see how women were treated even in a society with magic.

‘My parents never liked wizarding society. They think you are a bunch of backwards weirdos who insist on not using ballpoints pens and wear uncomfortable clothes’ she said, and Malfoy laughed. He _really_ laughed, with his whole chest.

‘It’s a pity we didn’t graduate, I would have loved to see my father wrap his mind around _that_ ’ he said in an exhale.

They stood in silence after that, at the edge of the bulwark with wind coming up from below, never letting them forget about the fall that was just a step away.

Hermione thought about it, about saying ‘thanks’ and walking away, taking the little comfort he had given her and letting him decide what to do, but what a loss that would have been. Malfoy was calculating and controlling up until he wasn’t, until he lost his temper and screamed _‘I’ll tell my father about it’_ or broke down in tears in the Prefects’ bathroom. He was all sharp edges and cold eyes, a youth full of mistakes made by betting on the losing side. But what a brain he had. What would have they become if Voldemort had never been in the equation? What would have they created by finding solace in battling and pushing each other academically? It was one of the biggest failures of wizarding society, according to her mother, the lack of higher education. So where would they have gone after Hogwarts? What was there after Hogwarts? Not all had to start and end in that cursed school.

‘Do you want to die?’ she asked bluntly.

‘I don’t feel like living either at the moment’

The wind barely managed to move his hair, which from blonde seemed to have gone completely white, caked with sooth and dirt just like his face. Hermione didn’t think she looked much better. She had won the war, he had kept his parents alive, but the consequences of what they’d done to reach those goals were eating them from the inside. Whilst she was just getting acquainted with the new state of her brain, Malfoy seemed to be a few steps ahead, tired of the mess and of a brain that seemed to work against him or not at all. The two of them, the sharpest knives in the drawer that had been misused so much until their blades became dull.

‘I… would like you not to’ she said finally. ‘I would like you not to jump’

‘Are you sure? This is your chance to get your revenge after all’ he answered, but there was no bite to his words.

‘I liked the joke too’

He looked genuinely surprised by that, but that also seemed to anger him. He would have jumped out of spite, Hermione was sure of it.

There was an increasing murmur around her, and Hermione realised that something was going on in the courtyard near the great hall. Impulsively, _again_ , she took her chance and grabbed Malfoy, pushing him and making both of them stumble back on firm ground.

‘Your mother is looking for you’ she barely managed to say before Malfoy rolled over her, his hands on her throat.

Hermione wasn’t scared. He wasn’t going to hurt her, he wasn’t even squeezing too much. She had no idea how she knew, but she just did. Malfoy wasn’t a good person, he didn’t like her, but he wasn’t a killer.

‘Why are you always getting in my way? What do you want from me? Could’t you just leave me be?’

She easily broke free of his hold and stopped his yelling by slapping him, his anger making her own rise.

‘I’ve given everything for this stupid war, Malfoy. You’re not allowed to die, I want to hate you and remember you without you becoming another ghost I need to pity!’

He looked at her like she had just stabbed him, although she was sure she hadn’t slapped him _that_ hard, eyes wide and breath coming short in puffs that gently caressed her face. At least he wasn’t shaking anymore.

He suddenly seemed to realise how close they were, and he got off her and scrambled to his feet, moving a hand through his hair with so much force that a strand of it came loose. She slowly got up too, and she briefly wondered why hadn’t she panicked when he was on top of her much like Bellatrix had been. Instead she just wanted to do it again, fight him without wand, just their bad tempers and snarky words. Another thing she couldn’t make sense of.

‘Are you crazy?’ he asked, angry enough that he would have surely tried to strangle her again if she got too close. ‘Did you went completely fucking bonkers, Granger?’

‘I could ask the same question, Malfoy! I wasn’t the one about to jump from the Hogwarts walls!’

‘Yeah, ‘cause you were the idiot who stood there with me!’

There was a moment of silence after that, the murmur of the crowd near the great hall becoming louder and louder between them whilst Hermione’s brain finally started to catch up to what she had done, to what her own impulsivity led to. She had no rational explanation as to why she was here fighting Malfoy. He was still her enemy in a way, but he also seemed to see her in a way neither Harry nor Ron did: Malfoy was angry at her, but he also seemed able to tell she was on the verge of a long overdue burnout and a mental breakdown, possibly because he was there himself, but even more likely because he never saw her for what she could do, but rather for what she was, could be, as _herself_. For him, she had been delightful surprise in those two shorts months, and then the one who would systematically prove all his beliefs wrong after they became enemies, but she was always _herself_. Malfoy wouldn’t have been disappointed if she didn’t have an answer, he wouldn’t have expected her to. It was refreshing and weird and confusing to even _think_ that if things had been different, Malfoy would have been the kind of friend that went to library with her to do research if she didn’t know something.

Merlin, how had she longed for something like that.

He wasn’t _supposed_ to be the one making her feel like that, and it seemed to be too much for her brain.

Before Hermione could say more, before he could let her get a glimpse of what he thought of it all after his anger had died down, Narcissa screamed. She screamed while some Aurors took Lucius away, but she remained paralysed with terror when they seemed to move towards Draco next.

’ _Don’t_ ’ Hermione said to them when they stood in front of her, expecting her to move.

It wasn’t Lucius being arrested that bothered her, no, his was a long time coming; but there was something that was happening, in those two Auror’s eyes, that made her sure something was wrong.

The two Aurors looked dumbfounded by her words, but they backed down and turned away quickly enough, a pinch of fear on their face. It was only when they were already turning their backs to them that Hermione realised that she was holding her wand in her right hand, little sparks coming out from the top, and magic moving restlessly around her.

‘What did you do that for? Are you sure you didn’t hit your head? What’s the catch? What do you want form me? Tell me!’ Draco screamed the last words in her face, shaking her by her shoulders.

She had a power over him she had never had before, and he was terrified. She could see it in his spirited eyes the way he feared she would force him to do things like Voldemort had, the fear would bind him into a servitude that was worse than an Imperio.

‘Draco, let her go’

Narcissa’s hand suddenly was between them, she linked Draco’s arm with hers, and thanked Hermione profusely. False niceties with which she hoped to keep her good favour, at least until they could get away.

Hermione watched them walk away, she watched Malfoy turn around to look at her at least three times before they completely disappeared from her field of view, confusion and anger and fear in his eyes. Hermione felt roughly the same emotions moving inside her, incapable to make sense of it, of what she had done after her brain had declared closing time after years of non-stop activity.

They had won. They had lost people, she had lost her family. But they had won. This was supposed to be the beginning of the Happy Ending, this was supposed to be the moment in which everything fell into place neatly, doubts disappearing. Instead, she felt something was wrong, something she could see and sense but couldn’t quite put her fingers on it, or even name it.

Why did she feel so angry? So betrayed by those who she thought were closest to her? Why was she bothered to see Draco Malfoy in that state as well?Why did she hate her kiss with Ron? Why was she glad Dumbledore was dead just like she was glad Voldemort was?

‘It’s finally over’ Ron said hugging her when he finally came to find her near the bulwark, at sunset, hours after she stood there with Malfoy that she had spent mulling over what had happened, what was happening to her, and finding no answers.

‘It’s over’ Ron repeated, and she smiled like he expected her to, but inside every part of her was creaming that it was a lie.

Something was fundamentally wrong. What had happened to her could happen again, she knew that somehow, deep inside her, and it made her so angry she could barely breathe.

For a moment - _just a moment_ \- she thought about putting her hands around Ron’s throat much like Malfoy had done to her before. But unlike Malfoy she would have pushed down, _hard_. She’d never been so scared of her own mind, of her own anger.

Hermione covered it all up with a fake smile.


	2. Chapter Two

Hermione tried, she _really_ tried.

But it seemed impossible for things to go back the way they were, for her mind to go back to what it was. Her brain felt like scrambled eggs on her better days, and she didn’t know what to do about it. Almost a year after the war everyone seemed to bounce back, they seemed perfectly able to kickstart a new chapter of their life. Even Molly seemed to be finally doing better, even after she’d sworn to be in mourning for Fred forever.

Everyone, but not Hermione.

She’d declined McGonagall proposal to go to Hogwarts to complete the year she missed while Harry and Ron went to train as Aurors. Instead, Hermione spent her time selling her parent’s old house and refurbishing the flat she was able to buy near Diagon Alley. It had been a much needed distraction, working on the interior of the flat, reshaping it until it was as cozy as she wanted it to be, a safe place in which she could be herself, breathe, and feel safe, and occasionally scream when she felt like she was about to explode.

She had entertained the idea to just buy a cottage somewhere remote and disappear, she also received a letter from Victor inviting her to Bulgaria if she felt like leaving England, but she stopped herself from following up on either. Because she was _trying_ , trying to be who she was before everything she suppressed for seven years came back to hunt her after the battle. Things had resurfaced that she didn’t understand, that she didn’t _want_ to understand, because doing so would have shaken her already crumbling world to the ground, and leaving would have been equal to declare bankruptcy on her brain, and she wasn’t ready to do that just yet.

There were so many things Hermione wasn’t ready to do, even more that she didn’t want to give up on, struggling every day more to hold on to the threads that linked her to the past, to the version of herself who was perfectly shaped to fit into the Golden Trio. Yet, the more she denied and repressed the swirling thoughts in her brain, the more the links to the past seemed to slowly disintegrate in her hands. She couldn’t help it. She was just _so angry_ , and it was unfair, it was unfair to put it on all Ron, but that where it always ended up on, and the more he called her difficult, unreasonable, the angrier she became. It was a vicious circle and she couldn’t break free from it.

After a year, she’d managed to drive almost everyone away. Harry and Ginny were the only ones who wrote to her with some kind of regularity, but her new-found irritability had forced her to stay mostly away from the Burrow before she could say something she would definitely regret to Molly or Arthur, who had been so kind to her during the years. And she felt guilty, she felt so guilty for feeling relieved she didn’t have to go to the Weasleys’s gatherings anymore, because she hated the fake smiles she had to plaster on her face. She hated how she couldn’t mention that she hadn’t felt fine since the final battle because Ron would always say: _’look at us, ‘Mione! We lost Fred but we keep going for him, he would have wanted that! Harry is doing great, too! Why are you always so hostile?’_ , and she would just get angrier and angrier before going home and disappearing in a pool of sadness for days at the thought that no one had ever asked about her parents, that the people she had know for years never asked why she acted like that. But to be fair Ron asked, even Harry, but they weren’t real questions, they were murmured to her in a corner in a hurry, to scold her for being too rude to Bill and Fleur or for not-so-subtly calling the new minister of education an idiot at a Ministry event.

The only moment of relief she’s had since the end of the war had been, weirdly, when she watched anxiously the trials of the former Death Eaters, her anxiety easing once Narcissa and Draco were acquitted yet sentenced to probation for a year, while Lucius and other Death Eaters were sent to a new Azkaban without Dementors. Her conversation with Malfoy on the bulwark remained an abnormality, yet it was also her only moment of sanity in a year in which she had felt her own mind turn on her. She couldn’t control her moods and she couldn’t control her emotions, some days she could barely get up from her bed, although with her own place things had gotten easier. Immediately after the war she had been forced to live at the Burrow until her financial situation got sorted, and it had been a nightmare trying to come to terms with what was happening to her whilst having to reject Ron on a daily basis.

She had tried, and failed, not to think about Malfoy. So she’d tried to move diagonally, thinking of the way he’d spoken about magic. She had tried to breach the subject of the way magic was understood to everyone, but no one had ever even come close to Malfoy’s words. It really seemed an afterthought, magic, for all of them, even for Harry, who had been exposed to so much of it. Because of that, everyone thought she would just go back to Hogwarts, or study on her own, but she hadn’t been able to pick up a book since before the battle, and the more she saw Wizarding Society go back to normal around her, the angrier she became, the more she felt inside as if something was wrong, and not only with herself.

Thinking about Malfoy meant thinking about those thoughts she had had before facing him, about Harry, Ron, what she had done to herself to be what was expected of her. She didn’t think she would ever be able to deal with those thoughts, fearful they would destroy what little she had left, but ignoring them was slowly destroying everything anyway. And the more she isolated herself, the more Malfoy came to mind. On the nights in which the memory of Bellatrix pushing the dagger into her forearm on the cold marble of Malfoy Manor hunted her dreams, waking her up in a cold sweat, it was the memory of Draco’s eyes with his hands around her throat that calmed her. Which was, she knew, absolutely _deranged._

It should have been Ron.

She should have been happy with Ron, nodding mindlessly at his quidditch nonsense, going to Hogwarts, enter the Ministry, but not aiming too high immediately, or Ron would have started complaining about it. She shuddered at the thought. Whilst she respected Molly, a side effect of her constant fussing, a side effect of the elves at Hogwarts taking care of everything, had been that Ron could not do chores besides the simple ones that could be dispensed by with simple spells. She had experienced it first hand while they hunted Horcruxes, and it had irritated her to no end that on top of everything she had to run after him to pick up his own stuff.

She had years and years of memories of the three of them, and Hermione didn’t know why they were suddenly turning sour. All she could think about where the moments is which they’d been annoyed, angry or when they had left her out despite her hard work, all the moments in which it felt like they used her. And it was ridiculous, they were _friends_ , but then why didn’t they check up on her? Why couldn’t they see that something was wrong if they’d truly known her for so long? They had never even asked about Bellatrix, and it had made her ashamed to wear anything other than long sleeves. She had moved in a flat in the heart of the British Wizarding World yet she’d never felt more of an outsider. Not even Malfoy’s insults had ever made her feel like that, but he had seen right through her after the battle, just like he had seen all her insecurities as a child and used them as a weapon to hurt her. And she craved for that, Hermione craved _desperately_ to be seen as the mess she was now, instead of being scolded for not being the person they thought she should be. They couldn’t help her if first they didn’t realise how broken she’d become, and she needed someone to help her because she couldn’t do it on her own, but they seemed incapable to acknowledge that, and the more they did that, the more Hermione isolated herself out shame, wishing to disappear, feeling like a broken piece that had been chewed and spit out by the Wizarding world she’d been so amazed by as a child.

Which was why at the first memorial for the victims of the Second Wizarding War her eyes immediately found him: Draco Malfoy stood at the back alone, his blonde hair covered by a black baseball cap, a grey hoodie with black jeans and a black coat, sneakers on is feet. He was wearing _muggle clothes_ , and Hermione froze on the spot, her brain incapable to process the image that her eyes were capturing. Malfoy seemed a little nervous, but overall he looked a bit better than her, he looked like he ate somewhat regularly, he was taller, his face had a healthy colour… all things that she was missing, she looked like a walking corpse on her best days, the hair he had teased her about for so long were now dry and still falling far too much because of the anxiety that never left her. She _hated_ that he looked so much better than her, she’d hope to find someone else who was as miserable as her, but while many were still grieving, no one was in the same state she was in. She didn’t know what was wrong and she couldn’t read because her concentration had, almost literally, fallen down the drain alongside her life, so go figure her anxiety was still peaking.

Malfoy seemed to watch her as well, in that subtle way of his that he’d used at school, but Hermione had slept far too much yet much too poorly to tell for sure. She knew he came alone, he spoke to no one even though she could make out other Slytherins in the crowd, and they were there, probably, for ‘The Apology’, or so Harry had called it: those with lighter sentences who weren’t at Azkaban would publicly apologise for their wrong doing. Malfoy had probably bought his way out of that, she’d seen him on the Daily Prophet every once in a while, mostly when she was forced to check if they’d printed something stupid about herself, so she could more or less tell that he’d not been up to much either.

Ginny tugged at her arm and Hermione turned away from Malfoy and followed her to their seats. They were, of course, first row, and she couldn’t help but grimace. She tried to have the appropriate expression her friends were expecting her to make, the flashing cameras and the crowd were expecting her to have, and she thought she succeeded. Or at least she did until McGonagall was halfway done with her speech.

It wasn’t anything specific that snapped her out of whatever haze she’s been in for the last year, it was gradual, like waking up alongside the sun rising instead of being scared to death by a too-loud alarm. McGonagall started to mention Snape’s redemption and then Dumbledore more and more, praising what good teacher and leader he had been, and Hermione found herself muttering _’what the fuck’_ under her breath.

And that was how she understood what it was, what had drove her crazy since the beginning of the end. They were holding a ceremony, a commemoration, they were saying _’never again’_ , but it was all a bunch of bullshit. Nothing had changed. Instead of taking the end of Voldemort as a chance to reform, they had just reverted back to the old ways and fully patched up the institutions that had easily fallen under a dark wizard not once, but _twice_ in less than a century.

Hermione was finally able to follow the thread left by her anger, which had come out of her little by little through the small resentments she had tucked away because Harry and Ron had needed her, and found how utterly right her mother had been of being scared to send her to Hogwarts at the beginning: McGonagall was talking of Dumbledore as the greatest wizard that ever was, yet he most likely was the worst Head Master Hogwarts had ever had. He had failed his most basic duty, protecting the students, and instead he used Hogwarts to stir Harry in the direction he wanted, making highly questionable decision that always left Harry, and thus her, to have to find a way to deal with the consequences. And there had been no repercussions whatsoever. He was still considered a great wizard, none of the adults who had been entrusted by her parents to take care of her thought there was anything wrong with that. Merlin, Hermione had fought her own father almost every summer to defend the dangerous situations she was left in, because in a weird way it had made her feel special, because for once she was part of a group, and they seemed to have needed her for so long that they had started to like her, or maybe not.

Her mind went back to Malfoy. Everyone still referred to him as the young Death Eater that cornered Dumbledore to his death. But if Dumbledore was this great wizard who knew Draco had been forced to try - and fail - to take his life, how could he have been cornered by a scared sixteen years old who’s family had been held hostage? Whilst some of the facts had been cleared during the trials thanks to Harry proving both a testimony and Snape’s memories, people had fixated anyway on these two _facts_ which clearly contradicted and invalidated each other.

Who was at fault? The sixteen years’ old boy who had been told his family’s lives depended on him going on a suicide mission? or the Head Master who had known about it all and done nothing? After, Snape had been forced to act just because Narcissa had forced him to, putting him in a corner with her words in front of Bellatrix and other Death Eaters. But Snape was Snape, and more than keeping Draco alive he couldn’t and wouldn’t have done, he certainly wasn’t the person to give inspirational pep talks about rights and wrongs. Snape had been a brilliant wizard, but a shitty person, and Hermione almost snorted out loud when she though that when everything was said and done, the same could be said about Dumbledore.

Hermione turned around trying not to attract too much attention to herself, and she found Malfoy’s eyes on her. He seemed to know exactly what she was thinking, hiding his smirk by looking down at his shoes. She wasn’t projecting and she was right, she was sure of it, because that was the same expression Draco had made whenever anyone said anything stupid in class, be that Ron or Crabbe. She’d never expected him to give that same expression to McGonagall, since he had always respected her, but after all Hermione had never expected she herself would ever think McGonagall would say something she considered complete bullshit.

Hermione turned back and looked at her friends. Harry, his hand holding Ginny’s, seemed at bit uneasy about such a praise for Dumbledore, but not outright offended. No one else seemed as concerned or irritated as she was, only Malfoy.

Her mind raced back once again to the bulwark, to the conversation she had tried to analyse countless times in the past year, trying to find the exact moment the old her broke. She thought about how he had told her he had felt cheated by a system he had thought he knew well, _those stupid house points_ he had said, and Harry being allowed to fail upwards so that Dumbledore could sacrifice him when the time came.

It all clashed in her mind, the mess of the last year and the clarity that came from finally putting her fingers on why everyone going back to normal felt so wrong, and she found herself out of patience and unwilling to filter her thoughts.

‘This is bullshit and you are all a bunch of fucking idiots’ she said interrupting McGonagall’s speech, the crowd gasping around her, her friends looking at her as if she’d gone crazy.

She stood up and walked away, the crowd parting to let her pass, and she didn’t look back once.

While everyone looked at her as if she’d suddenly turned into a gremlin, Draco Malfoy looked at her like he had when they’d attended their first shared class - Charms - back in first year, after she had answered correctly to all of the questions asked, performed every small spell without any flaws. Under that gaze, she walked away with her head high.


	3. Chapter Three

The aftermath was a mess of epic proportions.

The papers wouldn’t leave her alone, but her friends did after she tried to explain why she reacted in such a way. McGonagall had looked at her as if Hermione had killed her cat, not understating why she was being so hostile towards ‘old sweet Albus’, while her friends, after receiving her explanation, had either not contacted her at all or written just a short _’I don’t understand’_ , the ‘ _what’s wrong with you_ ’ silent but always there.

Harry had been the only to give her a look that bordered on understanding, but as he was thinking of making the Weasleys his family, he said nothing and followed Ginny’s lead: a short replay and then no contact again.

While she should have felt even more down with her new isolation, Hermione had embraced the sudden burst of energy. She’d taken to read all of the old copies of the Daily Prophet that she had staked near her window seat, carefully annotating everything she thought they had done - or they were doing - wrong in the new government that had been formed. She managed to fill an entire notebook as she refused to used parchment and quills, before the reality of her new situation finally hit her. It wasn’t missing her friends, she doubted that until she decided to deal with the sudden hostility towards them that had surface in her mind she would ever truly enjoy seeing them, but being alone and having no one to talk to meant that her thoughts were as good as nothing. Smoke that came out from a chimney to silently disappear into the sky.

The rights and wrong of the new Ministry were not something that had a definite and precise answer, and just like her first months at Hogwarts, she hoped for a companion with which she could discuss things, concepts, research… even if she’d been better disposed towards the Weasleys, Ron and Harry, none of them could have been that person for her. They lacked the curiosity and the interest, as if despite all that had happened they thought the Ministry couldn’t touch their daily lives, of perhaps it was something they still had to deal with. For Hermione, this was suddenly priority number one. She couldn’t move forward until she addressed it. She was thrown into a world she didn’t know until she received her letter, and she felt like the people that should have protected her and her friends not only had failed miserably at their job but had gone out of their way to purposefully put them in danger. Specifically Dumbledore, who she felt had accepted the position of Head Master in bad faith to say the least.

Suddenly, Malfoy was at centre of her thoughts again. Malfoy could have been that person, the person she could talk to without fear of being looked at as if she was weird or annoying, the person she could have said to _’I don’t know’_ if it wasn’t for the fact that they were enemies.

But were they?

The war was over, he seemed to have respected to the letter the terms of his probation, he’d learned more about muggles, he _wore_ muggle clothes and, most importantly, he gave Hermione _that_ look, that look that meant that no matter what everyone else face was suggesting, they were the ones who didn’t get it. He had been the only one to see that she had been on the verge of losing her mind after the battle, and him attacking her had been weirdly cathartic, reaching that part of her that just wanted to scream and punch the wall without the use of a wand and magic, the part fo her that was _tired_ of magic, and that had led her to slap him in the face again. Even the thought of it was ridiculous, that he, among all, seemed to be the one she could talk to. That he was the one, instead of her friends, that didn’t look at her as if she was crazy. He had admitted on that bulwark that his dislike of her had been born from her relationship with Harry as much as his boyish need to be praised by his father, and with his mean jokes had always demonstrated to know her more than those around her, even if it was just for the purpose to hurt her. He’d immediately spotted her anxieties about fitting in, how self conscious she was about her teeth and her hair…

Hermione wasn’t stupid, her mother had told her a thousand times not to trust boys too much, especially the ones that seemed too nice. Jean Granger had been troubled, to say the least, that she didn’t have any close female friends. _’Don’t be become of those women that hate women’_ was one of the last things her mother had written to her in sixth year, after the whole Lavander Brown situation, _’she just has different priorities, I wish you could find the time to relax and enjoy your time as well.’_

She’d been angry at those words back then, but she began to suspect her mother had been right. Had her mother known? How much she was sacrificing, suppressing, in order to be what Harry needed, the person they could relay on? Lavander was now dead, and it was hard to think back to that time in sixth year without being overwhelmed with guilt, but she’d been jealous. Not only of Ron’s attention, but mostly of the fact that Lavander could afford to be normal, even in the mist of it all, she could afford to be concerned about boys and heartbreaks whilst the only time Hermione had tried doing that in fourth year she basically got told not to. And she listened.

Without even noticing, Hermione started crying, she just wanted to talk to her mother even if she knew what she would have said. Jean would have taken out her old and new feminists books and explained to her that the point was for women to do what they wanted: to read books and enjoying make-up or not enjoying it all, the point was not feeling pressured, the point was feeling like she could make _any_ choice she wanted. It didn’t quite work out that way for her.

Hermione found herself curled up on the floor, sobbing, tears coming down for hours until she passed out from exhaustion. It wasn’t the first time such a thing happened, for her to wake up with a stiff back on the floor after crying all night, but it used to happen more often the first period after she moved in alone. The Burrow had no privacy, and even if inadvertently, without any malice, the Weasleys had made her feel as if she wasn’t really entitled to cry herself to sleep every night like she had wanted to. What was she mourning after all? Her parents were alive and well while Fred wasn’t.

But there was something new inside her that morning, it sounded like her mother telling her to be who she wanted to be, do what she wanted to do, even out of spite at first just to hold back the fear, because there was nothing scarier and nothing that hurt more than regret and losing oneself to appease others. That was what her mother had told her countless times, especially in the last years, and Hermione had been too angry to listen, too anxious, too eager to fit in and be what other expected her to be.

_’When I went to my first Women’s march, I lost some of my childhood friends, my boyfriend. Some things that are accepted now were hugely controversial back then. But then I made new friends, I grew into a person I could recognise and love, and on that path I met your father. I just wish for you to walk with your head high, Hermione, for your first worry when you’re about to do something not to be “what would they say? will they be happy?” Have consideration for your friends, but respect yourself and your wishes first’_

Hermione got up slowly and walked to her closet on trembling legs, and for the first time in years looked at her clothes and allowed herself to think about what she would wear that she _liked_ instead of what was practical, what would allow her to run faster in a dangerous situation, or from a stack of books to check to another. There wasn’t much, she’d never been much for shopping even though her mother had loved to. So Hermione put on what she liked best and went out.

Out of spite, to block the sadness and the fear.

* * *

Oxford Circus was busy as always. Tourists packing the sidewalks in both directions, going in and out of the high street shops that Hermione had steadily ignore for years, even though her father had loved to walk from the theatres in Covent Garden to Regent Street after the plays they went to see, to walk up the empty sidewalks in front of the darkened shops closed for the night, joking with Hermione about the ridiculous price of certain things.

Hermione had money of her own now, and she was bent on spending it on whatever she thought looked pretty. With measure. But _still._

It was more difficult than she expected. Everyone seemed to be with someone else, and she felt self conscious, she’d never shopped alone before. She ended up walking and walking, not daring to go into the busiest places but not even into the empty ones. Hunger distracted her easily, and once she walked past Piccadilly Circus she continued on, following the nice aroma of cooked food that brought her to China Town. She wondered up and down the small alleys, once again disoriented and feeling outrageously ignorant. She’d been so focused on Hogwarts and everything that went on that she had no idea about what any of the plates on the menus were. That fact that her parents had never been much curious about food certainly didn’t help. She couldn’t even remember if she’d ever even had Chinese food.

She stopped in front of a small shop that she believed sold tea, and tried to read the menu on the shop window when her eyes were attracted to something inside, or better, _someone_ : platinum hair and pale skin.

Draco Malfoy was very much sitting in a muggle shop, sipping a pinkish liquid with a straw from a huge plastic cup. He looked almost relaxed, and not even out place with his dark muggle clothes. She wondered if he ever wore something other than grey and black.

His eyes shot up, as if her felt her watching him, and when his gaze fell on her the straw slipped from his red lips, eyes wide. He was certainly surprised to see her there as much as she was surprised to see him. Refusing to just stand there like an idiot, Hermione walked into the small shop. There were only four small tables, and Malfoy had one all to himself even though the others were all occupied by couples. His eyes followed her every movement carefully, and she didn’t know if he was afraid she would snap like at the remembrance ceremony or like she had when they talked on the bulwark. She sat down in front of him not even knowing why, or what she would do next.

‘What… what is that?’ she asked instead, pointing at the liquid in the cup he was holding. It was pink on top, fading to white in the middle, and some black balls were visible at the bottom of the cup, the straw was unusually large too.

‘Uh? This? Bubble tea. You’ve never had bubble tea?’ he answered looking at her with curiosity now.

Hermione tried and failed not to blush, looking anywhere but at the smirk that was beginning to curve his lips. Out of habit, she immediately tired to justify her lack of knowledge.

‘We… we lived far away from major cities, two hours from London, and my parents never wanted to experiment with food. I mean, it was a big deal if the pasta wasn’t exclusively with tomato sauce’

’Well that’s just sad. I though you said they were quite well off’ Malfoy didn’t seem disappointed in her lack, he just seemed… okay with it. Like it was fine.

Hermione felt like she could breathe just a little easier.

‘They were, that was just… how they were. I’m surprised _you_ know so much’

‘Why is that? My father had his hands in politics for so long it was impossible for him not to be called from foreign wizards and witches that wanted a way into the British Ministry. I packed my Hogwarts luggage in a rush on first year because we just came back from South Korea. No more trips after that, as you can imagine, but people still came over’ his tone was light, but she could see how much he tried to control himself every time his father was mentioned.

‘I have to say, that confounds me even more’

‘I admit it’s a first class cognitive dissonance, yet perfectly in line with the Malfoy and Black line of thought. No matter what nationality, all that matters is whether they are purebloods or not. Anyway. Bubble tea. It’s great, from Taiwan. I come and have one every once in a while, want to try?’

‘Are you offering me a drink?’ she asked confused.

Malfoy clenched his jaw, something shifting in his eyes. Not quite anger, but not total disappointment either.

‘Well, _your_ insane outburst after the battle kind of snapped me out of _my_ insane outburst. So yes. I’m offering you a drink. Isn’t that what people do?’ he said, clearly irritated but also trying his best to look everywhere but at her.

‘I suppose it is. What flavour do you suggest?’ Hermione asked surprising him and herself. She really was going through with it, accepting a drink from Draco Malfoy.

‘Honey green tea?’ he proposed looking at her with a frown on his brow, clearly trying to make sense of what was happening as much as she was.

‘Oh, that… sounds good actually. What’s yours?’

‘it’s… a new one. Strawberry’

‘Mh, I prefer green tea’

He went up to the register and ordered one for her, and after waiting awkwardly for a minute he came back putting the cup in front of her, piercing the film with the straw for her.

‘Thanks’ she said before taking a sip and humming contently when the taste of it hit her tongue.

It was warm, sweet, and absolutely delicious.

‘it’s really good’

Draco nodded at that and took another sip of his drink, looking around. She’d never seen him behave this awkwardly before, there was this tension between then, and it made her wish he would break it with a mean joke, going back the simplistic rivalry they’d had back at school. But too much had happened for them to be able to go back.

‘So what are you doing here?’ she said choosing to break the silence once more.

Draco almost looked startled. She saw him clench his jaw while he thought about the answer and Hermione regretted asking, it wasn’t her business after all, they weren’t even friends, more like acquaintances that had hated each other, fought on opposite sides.

‘Came by to see some old acquaintances so they’ll stop nagging me about never leaving the Manor. You?’

‘I was… shopping… kind of’ she admitted, and Malfoy snorted.

‘You need to buy things for it to be called shopping, Granger’

‘I know that, Malfoy!’ she snapped at him.

‘Well, then what?’ he asked raising an eyebrow at her, almost as if he was trying to study her.

‘I’ve just… never done it before, okay?’ Hermione said with irritation and he looked genuinely confused.

‘Except you did, at the Yule ball’

‘That was a gift from my mother’

There was silence after that. She knew that the situation about her parents was known publicly even if she’d preferred it had remained private. Unfortunately, the correspondence between the new Ministry and the Australian Ministry had been leaked, resulting in some articles about how parents could never regain their memories, and some pitiful looks that came her way for weeks from the Weasleys.

‘Well… I am… weirdly thankful, for talking to me that day.’ Malfoy finally said after clearing his throat, ‘my mother’s too, and she would never let me hear the end of it if she discovered I said thanked you with just a four pounds drink. So… hem… the, uh, if you want… help?’ he said, grimacing on the last words, which were a shock to her as much as they were to him.

‘You would?’ she asked surprised.

Was he really going to help her pick out dresses? Draco Malfoy?

‘Well… you have a good sense of style, I can give you that’ she added, and he snorted before taking another sip of his strawberry bubble tea.

‘Do you want my help or not, Granger?’ he asked again, clearly becoming more and more irritated by her, becoming more and more the Malfoy she used to know.

‘I’ve never… have you? Shopped in muggle shops? Like the ones in Oxford Street?’

‘I have, I’m not a total idiot like Weasley, Granger. You pick what you like and you give them the money they ask’.

‘Very funny’

‘So?’

Hermione worried her bottom lip, but then she just nodded.

‘Not too crowded spaces, and not even empty ones’ she said when he made to stand up, and he looked at her with a gaze she couldn’t decipher before nodding.

‘I think I know the place’

He took her to Oxford Street to a store in which there weren’t too many people, the clothes weren’t too complicated, they had simple cuts and were practical yet not completely out of style. Solid colours over patterns. She liked it, and she was once again surprised that he could tell what she would like. She wondered if it was possible, to come to know someone else by hating them, if it was possible for her and Malfoy to apparently know so much about each other.

‘If there’s something you like just look around for a photo of the model wearing it, you can copy the look instead of trying to create one, that’s how I learned to wear muggle clothes’ he said taking her further into the shop before following her wordlessly while she looked around.

It was better, having someone looking over her while she tried to make sense of dressed and shirts, although she didn’t know why exactly.

‘Everyone seems to be around with other people, so it was weird for me to be alone’ she tried to justify herself out-loud, and Malfoy just hummed a sort of agreement.

‘Well, after years of Potter and Weasley tailing you everywhere I suppose it is weird to go around without them’

She wondered if he thought about Crabbe and Goyle, maybe Zabini, Nott or Parkinson, the people he used to always be around in school. He didn’t mention what had happened at the remembrance ceremony, how the papers had written relentlessly about the breaking of the Golden trio, and Hermione was grateful for it as much as she was irritated. She kind of wanted him to mention it, but she didn’t even know how to talk about Harry and Ron, she didn’t even know if she should talk about them to none other than Draco Malfoy.

‘I guess… we don’t see some things the same way anymore’ she settled for in the end.

It was hard to admit, and painful.

Malfoy was looking at her and he grimaced, like he could not stand his own thoughts. Hermione knew that feeling well, but he took a deep breath and then he spoke looking away, as if he was trying to pretend he wasn’t saying this to _her_ , to whether she was or represented to him.

‘I thought I wanted to be mean when I was young, as in, _really mean_ to you and Potter and Weasley. But it was fun only until it was petty rivalry. I was terrified by the dementors appearing at Hogwarts, by how far Umbridge started to push things. I guess, everyone is okay doing things theoretically, until the consequences of it are marked on your skin forever. The reality was so much meaner and scarier than I ever could imagine. I thought… I thought I would enjoy watching you snap at Potter and Weasley like I enjoyed it during the Three Wizards Tournament…’

‘But?’

‘It’s like watching a train wreck in slow-motion, and I don’t like it, and it’s weird that I don’t, but I do not’

Hermione bit her lower lip, tired and ashamed of herself, hating herself, all at the same time, while a weird sense of relief started to flood her at Malfoy’s words.

‘I… love them. But I am so angry. All of the time. And I don’t know why, or how to stop it, or what to do to stop it, or even when it will end or get better’

She looked everywhere but at him while letting the words out, afraid that he would contradict her and tell her that her fears where stupid or irrelevant. Surprisingly he didn’t.

‘I know the feeling’ he said, eyes skimming over her before looking away, almost embarrassed to admit that out loud. ‘I… I love my parents. I am very angry at my father, I actually don’t know if I will ever… but also at my mother so…’

‘And what did you do?’ she asked anxiously. If he had the answer for her problem…

‘Nothing. We’re not… one of those families where you talk about stuff. I have… well, I have seen muggle movies now, so I can tell you that we don’t do the whole hugging and talking that goes on there. But you Gryffindor do. So maybe just tell them how it is. I know Potter and Weasley have the emotional range of a teaspoon, but..’ he paused here, and he looked… _jelous_ , Hermione had never seen him openly jealous before ‘they care about you, so that has to count for something’.

She stood still for a moment, just looking at him as if he suddenly had revealed he was an alien, because of all the impossible things that had happened since the end of the war, Draco Malfoy telling her to talk to Harry and Ron had definitely not even crossed her mind.

‘Merlin, you’re more hopeless than I was’ he said irritated, walking away and coming back with a dress and a jeans jacket. ‘Take these’

‘Shouldn’t I try them on?’ she asked almost automatically, still in a daze.

‘It’ll be fine, Granger.’ he said before stomping away.

When she returned home thirty minutes later and she tried them on, Hermione smiled to herself, laughing in disbelief, because it did fit her nice.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything for the Harry Potter fandom in years, but recently I've come back to Dramione so here I am, denying the questionable choices made by the canon once again. I'm not sure where I am going with this but I am writing, so far so good I suppose.


End file.
